The problems with Charles Barkley’s ‘girly basketball’ comments
Charles Barkley, Hall of Fame basketball player and TNT analyst, made some sexist remarks when trying to express his dislike of the Warriors.
It’s one thing to be bad at your job. It’s another thing to proudly show up to work unprepared. This is Charles Barkley’s reality.
He has bad basketball opinions because…well, he doesn’t really watch basketball. Chuck is stuck in his old ways and longs for basketball to take a step backward and return to what it once was. He’s good for hilarious and misinformed sound bites. But when you encourage ignorance, you run the risk of getting some really awful comments.
Ahead of the Golden State Warriors’ game against the Houston Rockets on TNT, Barkley, a well-known enemy of the Dubs, had some words for the league’s top team. He said:
"“Maybe I’m old school, but I’m never going to like that little girly basketball where you have to outscore people. I’m biased against girl basketball…I love Geno Auriemma, one of my favorite coaches. I love women’s college basketball. But I don’t want it in the NBA.”"
It’s one thing to be OK with Barkley incorrectly calling Klay Thompson the second best all-around player in the world. It’s fine to accept that he has outdated views on how a basketball team should be constructed. It’s different to let this one slide.
There are so many things that are wrong with his statement. The first, least harmful one is that he’s just wrong about the Warriors. He’s always had something against Golden State and throws a shot at them every time he can. He’s not even trying to hide it anymore.
His argument that the Warriors’ style of basketball doesn’t work just doesn’t make sense. They’ve been the best team in basketball over the last two years and a perfect storm is the only thing that stopped them from winning their second consecutive title. Two more than Barkley.
Golden State has done it on both ends of the floor. They’ve had a high-powered offense behind all-time shooting, but they’ve also been incredible defensively. His assessments that three-point shooting teams can’t win are wrong because the Warriors aren’t the only team that shoots them. The Cleveland Cavaliers relied on the long ball quite a bit, but their biggest star is more powerful than Steph Curry.
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That’s the basketball problems with his statements. They’re wrong. It’s clear that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and, yet, he continues to get paid to analyze hoops.
But that’s the least of his problems. He made a clearly sexist remark that just doesn’t really make sense on several levels. They’re so off and he’s going to get a pass because he’s Charles Barkley and that’s what he does.
He’s suggesting that the Warriors play inferior basketball and that’s automatically associated with women. While women basketball players aren’t as high-flying as the NBA guys, but they’re incredibly high-skilled. There is amazing talent in the WNBA that should be celebrated, not used to describe a style of basketball you think doesn’t work.
There are a lot of ways to convey that you don’t like a certain team or the way they play. It’s wrong to compare something you think it’s negative to something women do. We should not accept that as OK. Calling them soft is one thing, equating that with women’s basketball is another.
If playing high-skill, selfless basketball is “girly basketball” then maybe everyone should play it. If having fun and being excited is “girly” then everyone should be “girly.” If being great is “girly” then we should all be “girly.”
But that’s not what Barkley meant and that’s problematic. You can’t just use words like “girly” as substitutes for “inferior” and “worse.” They aren’t interchangeable synonyms. The message that equating “women” with “worse” sends is a negative one, for both young girls and young boys.
We, as basketball fans, can tolerate uninformed opinions. We should not, however, accept this type of language. There are plenty of ways to describe something you don’t like or something you perceive as weak; using “girly” isn’t acceptable. Professional sports (male sports) are hyper-masculine and it traditionally has been hard for women to find a place and respect in them.
It’s on all of us to help uplift them and respect them. We recognized some important women here at BlueManHoop, but there are fantastic women everywhere in basketball. We cannot normalize sexist rhetoric in this wonderful game. Brushing comments like this off to the side is dangerous. We cannot let young women’s basketball athletes or fans feel like they are less talented or skilled or capable than men.
Maybe Barkley thinks jewelry are also girly. It could explain why he doesn’t have a ring.